[shader]

WOW. Just WOW. I have always believed that you can't have a good idea without someone else having it at about the same time, but this is the most uncanny experience I have had yet.

I had this exact same idea in January, or at least a very similar one. Time waves, etc.

Amazing.

By the way, this is one of the reasons I don't like patents that much - what if I had patented "A real time strategy game with time travel elements using propagating time waves"? Then these guys wouldn't have been able to implement it, even though they obviously came up with the idea separately, and have spent more effort implementing it.

[shader]

I should also have stated that in the reverse: What if he had patented the thing, when I have also independently created the idea? Looking over his curriculum vitae, it looks like he already has:

"Patent Pending: Methods, systems, and computer program products for simulating a scenario by updating events over a time window including the past, present, and future. Submitted July 10, 2008."

Oh well.

[davidbnewquist]

The hypothetical scenario you describe would be tough for Hazardous software; however, they had the opportunity to do a patent search for related pending applications prior to investing any resources creating Achron.

The Patent subsystem of our govt can serve a useful purpose for inventors and society in general.

But as with nearly any system of this type, there are "corner-cases" for undesirable usage.

A big problem is that someone can submit a patent and "sit on it" for years and years. A fallow patent provides no value to taxpayers. At best, the issue of the patent had a marginal cost for taxpayers, but at worst, there is a huge opportunity cost if commercial development of the invention yields value.

Our patent system should demand inventors make timely, reasonable effort towards commercial development of their inventions.

Kudos to the Achron inventor (Christopher Hazard?) for doing just that.